H. Hurricane Andrew and the Holocaust

I am writing this six days after Hurricane Andrew ferociously struck the south Florida area. The devastation, the pain, the destruction is clearly visible and alive. Driving through the streets of Miami and Miami Beach makes even more vivid the pictures appearing on television.

I have just re-read excerpts from Dara Horn's March of the Living Journal and my thoughts of the March and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew seem to merge.

I think back to last Saturday night, the eve of the hurricane. We have just returned from Shul (synagogue) to learn of the impending hurricane. Preparations must be begun and decisions must be made.

What should we do to prepare the house? What do you take? How can you protect the accumulation of a lifetime - the treasured things that are your precious memories?

You do the best you can, putting things on the floor alongside walls, away from the windows. You pack some clothes and food to take with you. You take the bottles of water that you have stored in your freezer for just this eventuality.

What papers do you take? You begin packing in a suitcase your wills, your insurance policies, your checkbook, your backup computer diskettes, and all of a sudden, your big suitcase is packed full of these items.

Suddenly it's time to leave. As we walk out of the house we look back, not knowing what we will find when we return. Perhaps this is the last time we will see everything that we leave behind - family pictures, videotapes and old films... awards and mementos.... 18 years of living and raising a family in this, our home.

We leave with a sense of foreboding, of impending imminent disaster - no time to really think, with mixed emotions, bewildered, unsure and uncertain what the future will bring.

Through that night and the next day, Andrew arrives and the catastrophe it leaves behind begins to unfold. It is impossible to describe my feeling seeing the total destruction of property and terrible impact unleashed on the people of the greater Miami area, especially south Dade. The look on people's faces, the stories of how they survived, the terrible damage to their lives and their homes remind you of victims who live through a terrible war. The pictures remind you a desolated war zone, as if a gigantic bomb has exploded in their midst.

In looking back and remembering the events of the past week, my mind reflects back on the March of the Living and what we saw and what we learned. For the first time I have a very tiny feeling of what it must have been like for the Jews of Europe when they realized that the Germans were approaching their cities and towns. They had no idea what to expect, but they knew whatever it was it would be tragic.

I can only begin to sense their feelings when they were told to report, sometimes within hours, for deportation and to bring only one suitcase along. What to take and what to leave... Would they ever see their home, their families and friends again? Their bewilderment, the fear of the future and the unknown, going to an unknown destination. Tragically, for many, their journey was just out of town, where they were murdered and buried in a mass grave. For others it was a trip in cattle cars to death camps like Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek to be murdered in gas chambers and their bodies burned in crematoria.

I got very little sense of what it was like when survivors tried to find family after the war. The desperation in trying to call to find out about close friends and associates after the hurricane was nothing compared to a survivor's search, usually fruitless, after the war.

On the Friday after the hurricane I observed my mother's yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death. As sad as the memory of her passing was, she was buried in a Jewish cemetery that I can visit and she died from natural causes. She saw her children married. Her first grandchild was born on her birthday and was named after her.

When I was In Shul (synagogue) saying kaddish, I could not help but think of the six million Jews who died a terrible death, whose final resting place on this earth is unknown, who have no one to mourn them or to name children after them and whose date and place of death is unknown.

Hurricane Andrew in no way can be equated with the Holocaust. It was a natural disaster and not created or carried out by human beings. Andrew indiscriminately hit our entire community and did not pick out one segment to unleash its fury on. The people, especially of South Dade, were hit, regardless of their color, their religion, or ethnic origin, and eventually the community together will heal itself.

The Jews of Europe were selected, isolated and eventually exterminated, only because they were Jews. That was their only "crime."

But in the aftermath of the storm, maybe we can gain a little better understanding of what it was like to face and feel a catastrophe. Maybe the beginning of this understanding will help us know better what happened and our responsibility never to forget.

Gene Greenzweig, Chair, March of the Living, South Florida Region